


Bodies Shine Together In The Darkness

by dorkilysoulless (custodian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Sex, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome, Top Hannah, emotions are confusing if you've never used them before, learning how love works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:26:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2401811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custodian/pseuds/dorkilysoulless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angels aren't marble statues.  Not really.  And who better to teach Hannah those lessons than Castiel?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bodies Shine Together In The Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd for maximum awesome by the inimitable [51stCenturyFox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/). Title from "Song" by Allen Ginsberg. 
> 
> End notes contain the correct answer to a question and Hannah's borrowed words.
> 
> Written as a fill for [Hellatus Prompt Fic Tuesday](http://itfeltpurefic.tumblr.com/hellatus) on my Tumblr blog.

Angels are beings of celestial intent: sexless, emotionless, disembodied, without desire.

This is the story and the belief. It is not without merit. Under the archangels, this was how these things were taught and made manifest, even if clear eyes could see the error of it.

Being as the stones is an ideal, not a reality.

And yes, Castiel is perhaps more prone to deviation than other angels of his true station — he confided to Hannah about Naomi in his weakened state — but he is still an angel.

He feels. He desires.

When she thinks about that, she feels too. Curiosity. Exhilaration. Ambivalence. Her body warms in places. Her chest feels full, her blood vessels dilate. She takes deeper breaths. She also aches in her heart for Castiel, who is not made for any world anymore, angel or mortal. She cares for him. She desires his happiness.

It is not the only thing she desires, but she is content to work toward that nonetheless.

She doesn’t understand at first, when Castiel tells her that he just wants to be an angel, what that means. Maybe he doesn’t either.

There is the obvious meaning: that he is tired, that he is battered, that he is mourning. He remembers things being simpler — remembers being simpler himself — and longs for it. How could he not? Who wouldn’t long for an eternity of placid awareness and certitude?

She helps him on his journey. He does his best to help her too, more often than not in ways larger than his fragile state should allow. Seeing this, watching him in action, expands her heart. That’s how it feels: a space in her chest growing larger to make room for Castiel.

They are seated on the hood of his car, gazing at the sky one night in Montana, when she describes this feeling to him.

“Hannah,” he says, voice halting and unsure. “Hold out your hand.”

She does. He laces his fingers through hers. It is warm. Not just objectively, but all through her. Her cheeks flush. The sensation is warm and strange. He smiles at her.

Castiel touches her face. He teaches her to kiss. He shows her how to use her hands, and attends to her with his own. He sinks to his knees to use his mouth, and that’s when she sees it in his eyes: service. No matter his state of grace, this is Castiel’s core. Service.

Not mindless. Never mindless. Chosen service, given freely with his whole heart.

Hannah welcomes him. Honors him. She touches his hair and accepts him. She praises his offering afterward, panting and astonished by her vessel’s faculties, and by Castiel’s ability to unlock them. He beams at her.

She allows him the peace of the moment, even if she can see there is still a sadness in his eyes.

# # #

Hannah can name that sadness as easily as she can name the prophets. They cross paths with it in a small town on I-44 and share a meal, Hannah and Castiel on one side of the booth, Sam and Dean Winchester on the other.

She notes the long pauses and the intimate looks. These nuances have become clearer, not just because of her time on Earth, but also because of her time with Castiel. She and he (inasmuch as angels are ever ‘she’ and ‘he’) touch one another with familiarity now. They share those same looks.

The difference is that when Castiel gazes on her the way he’s looking at Dean right now, their lips meet. Their hands don’t stop until they touch bare skin.

Sam does not comment, though occasionally Hannah notices him watching them. More than once he gives her a wry smile, as if to acknowledge some mutual awareness of the thing they are witnessing.

After their meal, the four of them linger in the parking lot, Dean bravely making small talk, perhaps in an effort to prolong the moment.

Hannah pulls Sam aside. Not far enough that Dean or Castiel would be concerned, but just far enough to be out of easy hearing.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks. His expression says confusion, worry. “Is something wrong? Is Cas okay?”

“No,” she snaps, surprised at the sudden flood of emotion that boils up in her at Sam’s concern. “Castiel is suffering.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

She furrows her brow and glares at him. “Your brother is either an idiot or a coward. That’s what’s wrong.”

“Wait, _what?_ ”

“Don’t play the fool with me.” Hannah glares at him, both confused and discomfited by Sam’s denial. She employs her full height — diminutive though it is in comparison with his — in an effort to display her displeasure. “Castiel’s longing is plain, as is Dean’s. What stops them acknowledging it? You? Someone else?”

Sam huffs out an awkward laugh. “Hannah, that’s…complicated.”

“Complicated? It should be simplicity itself.”

“Yeah, it should.” He crosses his arms and leans against the side of Castiel’s car. “But it’s not. Dean grew up a hunter, you know? And our dad was a Marine. Plus, Dean’s pretty messed up about this kind of thing, even with women. Lots of baggage.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. Human beings, Hannah decides, are absurd.

# # #

That night, in bed, she is almost over-gentle with Castiel. She touches his face softly and kisses his eyelids, and scratches lightly down the back of his neck they way she has discovered he likes. Her strength is greater than human when she presses him down onto the bed.

Castiel’s hands slide up her thighs as she mounts him. They rise up her back as he sits up to embrace her, and they rock together in the near-center of the mattress, legs tangled in a nest of blankets. She is pleasantly surprised by this new way of interlocking their bodies, and loses herself in the contact and ample friction where they are joined.

Bodies are magnificent. They are gifts. Incredible creations. So fragile. So mortal. Yet able to contain…

She loses the thought when Castiel shifts beneath her at the perfect instant. Wide-eyed and breathless, she grinds her hips in his rhythm, chasing the promise of climax and its attendant flood of endorphins. She knows the principles, knows the anatomy, even knows the process now, but in the moment none of these things is sufficient. Only the act and the experience does this thing justice.

Hannah gasps his name and digs her fingers into his flesh. This is fullness and completion, having him deep inside as she clenches and shudders around him. Castiel buries his face against her neck and rides with her: into, then through, then beyond her orgasm.

What a wonder is Castiel, lust-drunk and burning hot, playing her anchor as he clings to her.

She touches him everywhere. Her fingers trace his spine, comb through his sweat-damp hair, graze his jaw, his ribs, his thighs. “So good,” she whispers in his ear. “Wonderful, beautiful, Castiel.”

He cries out and his hips lose their rhythm. She embraces him through his climax, rocking into his thrusts, pushing him higher until he is spent.

They succumb to gravity and the softness of the mattress. Their kisses are soft and satisfied, and while neither requires it, they rest together for a while, just to enjoy the pleasure of it.

# # #

They cross paths with the Winchesters again in Oregon, their respective hunts converging more by accident than design.

It’s a fortunate accident: what she and Castiel had taken for a demonic uprising and what Sam and Dean had taken for a nest of vampires turns out to be a truly ugly combination of the two. It takes every ounce of skill and power their quartet can muster to purge it, and even then they emerge wounded and exhausted.

Sam escapes with a few nasty bumps and scrapes, but nothing that can’t heal naturally on its own given a little bit of time. Dean, however, is still struggling. They’ve brought him back from the brink — he’d been beaten then drained almost to death before she or Castiel could reach him — but it’s incomplete work after a pitched battle.

They follow the Winchesters back to the hotel and obtain connecting rooms. Dean consumes a meal of fast food, then falls asleep on top of his blankets. Sam joins Castiel and Hannah in the room next door to watch television.

Castiel accepts a beer from him.

“Want one, Hannah?”

“Yes, please,” she says. She neither requires nor desires fermented grain beverages, but a show of hospitality and acknowledgement of their social bond is no small thing.

Sam twists the cap from the bottle and passes it to her. The glass is cool and damp with condensation. She can taste the individual components of the beer, and finds she enjoys identifying them and their origins.

It is surprisingly easy to enjoy fellowship with the Winchesters, too. They are familiar with angels, and Castiel’s experiences make him a helpful bridge. They discuss the hunt, make small talk about the program on television — something about manufacturing, featuring an even-voiced narrator — and so forth.

Partway through the evening, Castiel reaches out and brushes his fingers across his forehead. The light of Castiel’s true nature illuminates the room briefly as the rest of Sam’s bruises and cuts fade.

“Thanks, Cas.”

“You’re very welcome.” There’s a faint smile on his face that Hannah has learned to identify as fondness. “How long will you and Dean be staying?”

He shrugs. “Couple of days. The university has a collection I want to check out while we’re in town, and Dean’ll never admit it, but he could use some time off. You?”

Castiel looks at Hannah. His eyes are hopeful.

“I think we’d benefit from taking the time as well,” she says, and smiles at Sam. “It will give us time to finish healing Dean.”

“Cool.” Sam nods and reaches for another beer.

# # #

It’s almost noon when Dean finally emerges from his bed. He peers into their room, bleary-eyed and rumpled, and blinks.

“Where’s Sam?”

“Library,” Castiel answers him, hardly looking up from his crossword. It’s a human hobby he picked up during his time incognito and graceless. He’s explained that he enjoys the challenge of interpreting the idiomatic clues. Hannah still finds them impossibly opaque; it’s possible she always will.

Dean yawns and rubs his eyes. “Right. The medieval demonology thing.”

“Yes. That thing.” Castiel’s eyes are still fixed on the paper. “What’s a nine-letter word for defunct ducks?”

A rapid series of expressions — confusion, consideration, irritation — crosses Dean’s face before he shakes his head. “No idea. Breakfast?”

Castiel looks up at him and tilts his head to the side. “Is it common to eat duck at breakfast? I suppose ‘defunct’ could be interpreted to mean decea—”

“Cas, no,” Dean says, and holds up a hand. “Not what I meant.”

“Ah.”

“I’m gonna get a shower.” Dean turns away, vanishing into his and Sam’s room.

“It was a reasonable mistake,” Hannah says as she reaches across the table to touch Castiel’s hand. “Breakfast has nine letters in it.”

He smiles at her, then writes it in.

# # #

Dean eats like a starving man at breakfast, devouring an order of biscuits with sausage gravy, scrambled eggs with cheese, two kinds of sausage, some bacon, and hash brown potatoes topped with chili.

From their side of the booth, Castiel and Hannah look on: Castiel with clear affection, Hannah with amusement, and perhaps some mild concern.

When they return to the hotel, Hannah heals the wounds she can, and the three settle into hers and Castiel’s room. Dean lays claim to the remote and changes channels repeatedly until settling on an animated program about unusually large robots.

She is not surprised when he dozes off, nor when Castiel stops watching television to watch Dean instead.

“He’s precious to you,” she says softly as she moves to sit beside Castiel.

Castiel purses his lips, then nods. “Infinitely.”

“Is that why you haven’t told him? Because you’re afraid of his…” She searches for the word Sam had used. “His baggage?”

“Yes.”

Hannah rests her hand on his.

“I’m not sure you can understand, but once I learned desire it became impossible to stop wanting him,” Castiel says, his words well below human hearing. “I wonder sometimes why it should hurt more than anything else.”

“He looks at you with desire too, Castiel.”

He huffs out a pained laugh. “No. I don’t think he does.”

“Why not?”

“Hannah, when he wants a thing, he reaches for it. Dean loves women and pursues them incessantly. He eats the things he likes without concern for stigma or health. He freely consumes intoxicants. I have seen him spend nearly twenty dollars in quarters in a single day on the use of a vibrating bed device. Should I go on?”

She shakes her head. Castiel is correct, of course. The so-called Righteous Man’s capacity for habitual sin had been a topic of much argument in Heaven, and while she’s never been in a position to observe the Winchesters with the same level of scrutiny that Castiel has, nothing he’s said is a surprising revelation.

Still, just as Dean is capable of being both sinful and righteous, she suspects that he is able to abstain just as much as he reaches for things.

“I think I’ll be ready to finish healing him when he wakes up,” Castiel says.

“Good.” She squeezes his shoulder and stands. “Would you like to come watch the birds with me?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I should stay.”

Hannah leans down and kisses Castiel’s temple. She picks up her key from the table and leaves as quietly as she can.

# # #

Sam returns late in the afternoon with a copious amount of food and drink and a backpack full of books and photocopies.

“I swear, man. Give that kid a library—” Dean says, shaking his head but smiling as he sorts through the paper bag. “Dude, where’d you find a taco truck in Oregon?”

“What, Oregon can’t have taco trucks?” Sam shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the bead. “They’re trucks. They can kind of go where they want by definition. People in Oregon like food. Tacos are food.”

“Whatever.” Dean pulls a churro out of the bag and bites into it with obvious relish, then looks up. “I think there’s enough if you two are interested.”

Hannah shakes her head. She appreciates the gesture — Dean knows well enough that neither she nor Castiel require food, even if it’s proper to offer it — but both Dean and Sam will benefit more from proper sustenance than they will from her accepting that gesture. Castiel likewise declines.

Everyone settles into their places. Dean at the table. Sam on his bed with food to one side and papers to the other, chattering excitedly about the library’s collection. Castiel, seated on Dean’s bed, resting up against the headboard in silence. Hannah seated at the foot of Dean’s bed, watching things unfold.

“So I guess this means we’re sticking around another couple of days,” Dean says through a mouthful of food.

Sam looks up. “You complaining?”

Dean shrugs.

They eat. They chat. Hannah enjoys the simplicity of it. She likes watching the Winchesters at rest. Being human. Being brothers.

This time it’s Sam who goes to bed early. Dean follows her and Castiel into the adjoining room, six-pack in hand. He pauses at the door.

“You think the maids wonder what’s going on in here?” he asks, and gestures at the beds she and Castiel have only used as a place to sit or keep their things. “Like, two rooms, nobody’s using the beds in this one?”

Dean raises his eyebrows suggestively. Castiel frowns and looks away. Hannah holds her tongue, and refrains from pointing out that Dean’s presence (and his brother’s) are very likely the reason the beds have gone unused.

“Just saying, it looks a little freaky.” Dean sits on one of the beds and peels at the label on his beer. He tilts his head back and narrows his eyes. “I wonder who they think is banging who.”

“Should I take this as a sign you’re feeling better?” Hannah asks as she walks to join Dean, seating herself on the edge of the bed beside him. She takes note of his wariness — unsurprising, honestly, given their history — but tries to put him at ease with a smile. She holds up her hand. “May I?”

He puts his beer down on the nightstand. “Knock yourself out.”

Hannah closes her eyes and raises her hand, opening her awareness to his being, searching his flesh for any lingering injury and finding none. He is, in all likelihood, better than he’s been in a while. In fact, he seems suspiciously free of the kinds of things a hunter his age should suffer from: old fractures, badly-healed sprains, obvious scars.

She is glad to see him well. She is. But she is disappointed, too. She had hoped to point to some missed hurt so that she could put Castiel’s hands on this man’s body. Now, the foolishness of her plan is obvious. How many times has Castiel knit this man back together? Tens at least. Hundreds? She wouldn’t be surprised.

“Hannah? Is something wrong?”

It’s Castiel’s voice, and it startles her. When did he move so close?

“No. Nothing.” She stands and, on pure impulse, slides her hands under Castiel’s coat and jacket. The heavy layers of fabric slide down his shoulders with little resistance. It’s a simple thing to step to the side and take both by their collars and pull, leaving Castiel in his shirt and trousers. “See for yourself. He’s well. Perfect.”

They are, of course, both looking at her now. This is impossible. Sam Winchester is right. She is a fool.

Hannah looks at Castiel, gestures to Dean.

He hesitates, then turns and sits where Hannah sat, on the edge of the bed, turned just slightly to face where Dean is sitting. Light fills the room as Castiel’s fingers brush against Dean’s skin.

There is a phrase about fools and angels, and Hannah thinks of it as she kneels behind Castiel and reaches to lace her fingers through his. She guides his hand to Dean’s cheek, his throat, his chest. Dean watches them both, eyes wide with surprise. She feels the tension in Castiel’s back and shoulders where she presses against him.

The poem feels unnatural in her mouth, and she recites it haltingly at first, as if their apprehension is made manifest through her. It was an easy thing to learn, only a few pages in a slim and battered volume she’d noticed poking out of Dean’s jacket pocket while he slept.

It takes perhaps a minute to speak it, but minutes are long, longer than one ever imagines them to be. This one is long enough that by the time she utters the final line that the only things that tell her that the world has not frozen around her is the way Dean has closed his eyes, skin flushed and brow furrowed as if he is in pain, and the slight shift of Castiel’s body against hers.

“Let him tend your hurts, Dean,” she whispers. “Ease his in return.”

Hannah leaves the bed, and the two of them, and the hotel room. She only stops walking when she reaches the edge of the street on the far side of the hotel parking lot. There’s a bench nearby, and she sits, eyes fixed on the stars above her. They move, and the Earth moves, and she takes solace in that. If this many things can fall and dance around them, surely here she has done no evil.

The chime of her ringtone is not reassuring.

“Hannah?”

“Castiel.”

“Where did you go?”

She hears concern in his voice, not anger, but it galls her all the same that he is wasting his time calling her instead of paying attention to Dean. Still, she should not be surprised. This, of course, is Castiel: the most stubborn, self-aware angel ever to lead a garrison. Castiel, who has never quite done as he is told, even when it should bring him joy to do so.

Clearly angels can be just as absurd as human beings.

“I’m outside,” Hannah says, finally resigned to failure. “On a bench. I’m not far.”

Castiel’s voice is muffled for a second, but she can decipher enough to tell he’s relating this information to Dean before he asks her, “Are you coming back?”

“I was hoping to give the two of you a measure of privacy and time, but yes.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “I was afraid that you were leaving.”

Her breath catches, and she feels an unexpected ache in her chest. Perhaps Castiel and Dean aren’t the only ones who are absurd after all.

“Don’t worry about me, Castiel. We’ll have time enough to discuss this in the morning.”

They end the call.

Hannah watches the sky.

# # #

She returns in the small hours. Dean is sleeping in Castiel’s bed, his jeans and boots and overshirt safely tucked away on a chair. Castiel has one arm around him, and is holding what looks like one of Sam’s books in the other. He is still wearing his trousers and a soft white undershirt.

It is, she suspects, impertinent to ask what happened in her absence, so she sits down on her bed in silence. When Castiel finally speaks, it’s low and in Enochian.

“You shouldn’t have pushed us like that.”

“You needed someone to push.”

“No, I didn’t.” He seems…not angry. Tired. Perhaps a little sad. His eyes soften, though, when Dean mutters in his sleep and nestles in closer. “You should have asked first.”

“You were in pain.”

“I’m aware, yes.” Castiel sighs. “But at least I had a choice about it. You were selfish to force the issue without asking.”

Anger rises in her, sudden and bright. Castiel must see it, because he narrows his eyes and shifts his arm as if to protect Dean from her. It’s enough movement to wake him.

“S’goin on?” Dean mumbles. He blinks and lifts his head. “Hey, Hannah.”

“Hello, Dean,” she says, tamping down her anger.

Castiel looks away from her, focuses on Dean. “I was just telling Hannah what we discussed. About coming back with you to Kansas.”

“Mm,” Dean hums. He pulls in a breath in through his nose and stretches, then smiles up at Castiel. “You should.”

He is a stupid, unkempt human, radiating warmth and comfort in ways she cannot. Hannah hates him for it, especially when he turns his head to her and gives her a bleary-eyed grin. “You’re okay with it, then?”

“It’s Castiel’s choice, not mine.”

“Awesome. Then we’re on.” Dean sits up and kisses Castiel on the lips.

It’s closed-mouthed, only slightly more than chaste, but seeing it…well, it causes her more sorrow than she expected. They are beautiful together, and already intimate in ways she struggles (but wishes, almost painfully) to grasp. This loss is not a surprise, but she will miss what she’s had with Castiel now that Dean has taken the place she prepared for him.

She watches Dean as he slips out of bed and shuffles into the bathroom neither she nor Castiel have had need or occasion to use. He closes the door behind him.

“You seem dissatisfied with your work, Hannah.” Castiel’s voice is low again.

“No, just making peace with it.” She gets up from the bed. “I suppose I should see myself out.”

He blinks. Scoffs. “What?”

“Don’t, Castiel,” Hannah says. “You have him now. You’ve chosen him. And now you’ll go with him. Consider this my penance for taking your pain without permission.”

“Oh, Hannah,” he says, and rubs his face with his hand. After a moment, he stands and takes her hand, then gestures for her to sit with him on the edge of her still-made bed. One of his arms wraps around her back, and he rests his chin on her shoulder.

She wants his warmth. She wants to push him away. It’s paradoxical and new and it is utterly miserable.

“Are you so afraid to lose me that you won’t hear me?”

Hannah sighs. “So speak.”

“Dean didn’t ask me to come to Kansas. He asked us.”

She frowns, pulls back from Castiel so that she can look at him. “Us? Why would—”

The pieces fall into place. She feels her eyes go wide, all involuntary reflex and surprise. She stares at him, stunned.

“Oh,” she says. “ _Oh_.”

Castiel’s smile is the sun. His kisses are fire. And when Dean returns, he closes the door to Sam’s room. He gazes on her in a new way — different from the way he looks on Castiel — but it leaves her feeling strangely breathless nonetheless. He helps Castiel undo the buttons of her shirt and joins them in unmaking Hannah’s bed.

# # #

At the Bunker, there are permutations.

Castiel and Hannah choose their own rooms. Neither sleeps, but each benefits from a space of their own, even if many nights one (or two) of those rooms is empty.

Tonight, they are in Dean’s room. Hannah sits at the head of the bed, one leg over Dean’s shoulder, fingers dug deep into his hair while he tastes her.

He is slow. Worshipful. Like Castiel, there are parts of him that love service.

When he moans against her, it sends ripples of warmth through her body so strong that she can’t resist pulling at his hair to inflame him further.

“He likes that,” she says, and lifts her half-lidded eyes to watch Castiel push deeper inside of Dean with a slow roll of his hips. His hands glide over Dean’s freckled back and hips. “Give him more.”

Castiel draws a shuddering breath in through his teeth and does as she bids him. Dean cries out against her thigh.

She does not release him. Instead, Hannah returns his mouth to its place and cants her hips in time with Castiel’s. Judging by the flush of his skin and the way he moves between them, Dean is beyond the point of complaint. If anything, it makes him hungrier and more desperate to please.

Hannah can gladly attest to his skill in that area. She quivers as he sucks at her clit, then glides his tongue-tip, feather light against it. He circles it, laps at it, takes it between his lips once more.

“You’re both so good,” she purrs, luxuriating in the heat of shared skin and the slow tension growing between her legs. “So beautiful.”

Castiel digs his nails into Dean’s hips.

She slides a hand under Dean’s jaw and lifts his face to hers. She kisses his swollen lips, tastes herself on his skin. His eyes are glossy and dark as she shimmies down the bed beneath him. Castiel helps them with the condom, and when she presses her lips to Dean’s ear and whispers a single word — “inside” — he is all too happy to oblige and bring her the climax she expects of him.

And oh, this body. What their Father had in mind in making such a thing she still has yet to grasp, but the way it still feels pleasure after she comes will never cease to astonish her. Nor, she thinks, will the capacity for sympathetic joy she feels when Dean loses himself in hers and Castiel’s bodies. He rocks and shakes and pleads into the crook of her neck until he finds his release between them.

He is pliant when Castiel lifts him onto his lap, keeping him in place with strong hands while he finishes inside, fast and hard.

Castiel is gentle, though, when he lowers Dean back onto the mattress. He disposes of the condoms, then joins them both, one arm draped over Dean to clasp Hannah’s while he rests his sweat-damp head against Dean’s shoulder.

She threads their fingers together, and slides a foot over Dean’s ankle as she presses closer against his still-flushed skin.

There is a feeling in her chest, familiar now, where she feels bigger and more full of light than she imagined possible. She thinks of a night not long ago, spent under the stars, and is glad.

**Author's Note:**

> The actual answer to the crossword clue is "natatores," which is an obsolete taxonomic name that includes the aquatic birds (e.g. ducks, geese, swans). As luck would have it, using "breakfast" still works for Castiel because the other clue crosses on the first a. 
> 
> The poem Hannah recites to Castiel and Dean is Song by Allen Ginsberg, which she finds in Dean's copy of _[Howl and Other Poems](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl_and_Other_Poems)_ : 
> 
> The weight of the world  
> is love.  
> Under the burden  
> of solitude,  
> under the burden  
> of dissatisfaction
> 
> the weight,  
> the weight we carry  
> is love.
> 
> Who can deny?  
> In dreams  
> it touches  
> the body,  
> in thought  
> constructs  
> a miracle,  
> in imagination  
> anguishes  
> till born  
> in human--  
> looks out of the heart  
> burning with purity--  
> for the burden of life  
> is love,
> 
> but we carry the weight  
> wearily,  
> and so must rest  
> in the arms of love  
> at last,  
> must rest in the arms  
> of love.
> 
> No rest  
> without love,  
> no sleep  
> without dreams  
> of love--  
> be mad or chill  
> obsessed with angels  
> or machines,  
> the final wish  
> is love  
> \--cannot be bitter,  
> cannot deny,  
> cannot withhold  
> if denied:
> 
> the weight is too heavy
> 
> \--must give  
> for no return  
> as thought  
> is given  
> in solitude  
> in all the excellence  
> of its excess.
> 
> The warm bodies  
> shine together  
> in the darkness,  
> the hand moves  
> to the center  
> of the flesh,  
> the skin trembles  
> in happiness  
> and the soul comes  
> joyful to the eye--
> 
> yes, yes,  
> that's what  
> I wanted,  
> I always wanted,  
> I always wanted,  
> to return  
> to the body  
> where I was born.


End file.
